Democratic Leaders Reject Calls to Support Medicare for All

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

By Michael Sainato (Reposted/ Revised)

The Democrat Bunch: Always diametrically opposed to the people’s interest, while pretending otherwise. Obama is now officially retired, but his influence continues. Meanwhile Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer carry on implementing the wishes of the plutocracy (and Israel, of course).

The Democratic Party’s leadership is clearly beholden to the political center [right and the interests of their wealthy donors—as is evident from their lack of support for the Medicare for All bill. Democrats in the House and Senate are increasingly coming out in support of the Medicare for All bill, which Bernie Sanders has tried to put on the agenda. But instead of riding this wave of progressive support and the popularity of Medicare for All to draw a significant contrast against Trump and the Republican party, Democratic Party leaders are obstructing its momentum.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently reiterated she will not support Medicare for All, claiming she is opting to preserve the Affordable Care Act. She has made similar comments in the past, including a hypocritical claim earlier this year in which she said, “The comfort level with a broader base of the American people is not there yet. It doesn’t mean it couldn’t be. States are a good place to start.” Pelosi hasn’t supported single-payer healthcare in her home state of California either, nor has she ever co-sponsored a Medicare for All bill in the years since Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich., began introducing it in 2003. The comfort level with the American People is there, the discomfort lies with Democrats so beholden to their donors on this issue that they won’t even bring themselves to co-sponsor legislation. They are laboring under the false pretense that doing so will expose flaws in the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile polls and surveys increasingly show most Americans support Medicare for All, and that support has surged in the past year.

The best way to preserve the Affordable Care Act, until an improved system replaces it, is to support Medicare for All to provide healthcare as a right to all Americans. Pelosi is not alone in her rejection of Medicare for All. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., House Democratic Party Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., DNC Chair Tom Perez and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair, Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., are also holdouts against the bill. Only Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., and Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn, D-S.C., have signed on as co-sponsors to to the bill, while the top leader of the Democratic Party continue to treat the policy as a nuisance.

Pelosi and Schumer mixing with citizens to keep the franchise going. They will answer with evasives if anyone should ask them about Medicare for All.

These establishment Democrats need to get on board for Medicare for All, or get out of office. Progressive policies like this are becoming mainstream, and a surge in popularity for this policy is a testament to the success progressive activists are finding in the wake of Trump’s Presidency to fix the Democratic Party so as to represent voters’ interests, not wealthy donors. Progressives are underrepresented in the Democratic Party, especially in the party’s leadership, with some of the most moderate Democrats occupying top positions. Their leadership has dragged the Democratic Party into the ground over the past decade. Pelosi, Schumer, Hoyer, and Lujan are relics of a Democratic Party that embraces stagnancy and preserves the status quo over change.

14 comments

subhuti 2November 24, 2018 - 2:57 am

What is so disgusting about these people is that their medical care is just like Single Payer–the US government buys their health insurance, which they voted on to give themselves….good for them but not good for us.

What’s even more egregious is that they keep funding socalled National Defense. As if a optimally healthy and well educated population which can compete with other nations, and be most productive is not considered the first line of National Defense.

What’s the point of 800 military bases when people can go bankrupt for lack of money to pay for care? Where are the public education programs to eat properly and exercise? Bombs are better? These people’s priorities are insane.

Spot on, as usual, Subhuti. I would only say that their “insanity” is a classical example of the subjective clashing with the objective, with the latter being upheld by the vast majority of human beings NOT invested in the victory of Wal Street. For these repugnant, sociopathic and criminal congressional whores (yes, I’m being redundant on purpose) acting as whores makes sense: it gives them all they want—power, money and fame. And that, in their amoral caculus, is perfectly rational. Let’s face it, these mendacious scumbags operate on the same moral continuum as big corporate executives.

So all US elections are “whores’ races”, and for mass media that’s the entirety of politics. I have been censored and banned repeatedly for sharing this label and pov. You to me are an unusual moderator, atypical I think.

Change is in in the air. Trump has fulfilled his function as a provocateur and disruptor for which he is punished by calumny every second in the perfidious media. Never before in my fifty years in this country have I seen such an increasingly self-conscious public that even though they may still hew to the stale ideas of such as Clinton and Obama mostly see now through the opposing forces of neo-conservatism. The #metoo movement, though also reactionary in many instances, helped to break down old shibboleths about class and gender, even though racism remains a major force. But the more Trump crashes through, the more exceptionalism and political provincialism weaken and that is a good and hopeful sign.

Understand that we’ve been hearing “change is in the air” since the Reagan years. Many knew that the Obama years were our last chance to bring the proverbial masses — poor and middle class, workers and those left jobless — back together, for the common good. It was worth a try, but there was little broader public interest.

Yep. Obama won with a huge mandate to do anything he wanted and we found out that all he wanted to do was to defend the status quo and continue the transfer of wealth to the rich. Which he did. Wealth inequality went way up during Obama’s tenure to levels unseen since before the Great Depression.

Banks got bailed out and we got diddly squat. This was the mandate that he was given when he was spouting hope and change. Why people think that he was the best president since FDR is beyond insane. How they can’t see him for what he was is also insane. He extended the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, invaded Libya and Syria, gave the Saudis his support for the Yemen genocide and accomplished two coups in Honduras and Ukraine. Not to mention how he expanded the drone program to gawd knows how many countries. Then there’s his deportation of more immigrants than any other president before his tenure.

Oh yeah. And he passed the hideously flawed ACA when he had the votes to pass single payer because he went through reconciliation which only needed 51 votes to pass. Just like the republicans were able to pass their tax bill. Funny how the democrats can never stop the republicans from passing their legislation while the republicans can do to the democrats.

Interest has two meanings. A- does it garner attention? B-is it good for most people? Yes, people are deterred by terror, blatant and implied, from giving attention to what is good for them. It’s not just worth a try; It’s the only hope.

Contributing editor John Walsh sends this message: The article contains this gem: “The best way to preserve the Affordable Care Act, until an improved system replaces it, is to support Medicare for All to provide healthcare as a right to all Americans.”

Perhaps he has expressed himself poorly.

BUT the idea is not to preserve ACA which is a disaster – with extension of Medicaid, racist, second rate care instead of first-rate Medicare and rising premiums, copays, deductibles and declining coverage.

And he seems totally unaware of the efforts to get enabling legislation at the federal level for state-based Single Payer efforts.

How does racism fit in? We’re over 20 years into our war on the poor, the majority of whom are white. We deny the poor the most basic human rights (UDHR) to food and shelter equally, regardless of race. Lack of adequate food and shelter have the same results, regardless of race.

Blacks get shot first, and denied care first. By creating a lower track of service Capitalism divides and conquers. Even Ella May Wiggins (a natural communist) understood this reality in 1929. You will get no universal care until all are included, so you might as well start you walk on the correct foot. The results might be alike for individuals, but not for those in solidarity.

Some have been pointing out all along that Congress knows anything resembling universal health care would make no sense in a country that’s years into its war on the poor. It’s not possible to maintain health without adequate food and shelter, and there are expected to be many more poor (not just low-income) by the end of Trump. “Medicare for All,” by any other name, will fall into the background, only to be recycled in 2020. Democrats really don’t have anything else left to sell.

True: Health implies a safe dwelling, wholesome food, guaranteed income or a living waged employment with adequate time off, freedom to assemble and organize, and the absence of spying and hectoring to buy. Right now I couldn’t trust a doctor or nurse practitioner to look out for me, and I think many of the treatments I could use are not offered. Health care is just like all the other profit centers, alien and exploitative. Emergency medicine seems the only positive, and it’s iatrogenic (kills).

Sweet: Buy one of OUR buttons and help us stay afloat.

Dear (Damned) Democrats

Truth, at last.

This is what the plutocracy that Kissinger serves really thinks of the military. All that praise and worshipping on the media is just a thick curtain of hypocrisy to maintain morale among the deceived imperial troopers.

It ennobles our lives.

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